34 BRITISH BUTTERFLIES. 



scaling which covers its wings is more green than blue, and has a 

 beautiful lustre, and the ground colour, when the scales are removed, 

 is not brown as in coridon, but ashy-grey and beautifully shining. 

 Hiibner first figured the insect (luir. Schmett., pi. 148, fig. 742) about 

 1817. Meigen then gave a good figure of the same form, but with 

 discoidal lunules on all the wings (Hubner's figure only has them on 

 the forewings), a dark band on .the outer margin of fore wings, and 

 well-defined reddish marginal spots on hindwings, under the name 

 tithonus. Boisduval, in 1840, called the species mariscolore, a very 

 appropriate name, whilst Keferstein, in 1851, named it syngrapha y 

 without description, merely referring to Hiibner's pi. cxlviii., fig. 742, 

 and Meigen's pi. xlvii., fig. 2, with the remark " var. a, syngrapha, 

 Alpen, Pyrenaen," and the statement that " Meigen figures the alpine 

 variety of corydon, but describes Ochsenheimer's eros." This is not at 

 all accurate, for Meigen describes the insect that he figures most 

 accurately (see our quotation supra) ; he adds that he does not know the 

 $ of his tithonus, but supposes it ma} r be Ochsenheimer's eras [ — tithonus, 

 Hb.), the $ of which w T as not known, and quotes Ochsenheimer's descrip- 

 tion of eros, in case it should prove to be the $ of his insect. Herrich- 

 Schaffer, writing (Sys. Bearb., vi., supp. p. 27) of the form, notes that 

 " some examples of the $ are silver-blue with red marginal lunules 

 on the wings, as in Hubner's fig. 742," and that Lederer had "received 

 it from Burgundy; " he adds that his " fig. 361 represents the under- 

 side of such an example," i.e., a tithonus upperside a,nd parisiensis under- 

 side. In spite of the general statements to the contrary, the form 

 does not appear to be particularly, if at all, alpine. The examples in the 

 British Museum coll. vary somewhat, e.g., (1) in the number of the 

 discoidal spots, sometimes two (lunulata), usually four (typica); (2) in 

 the presence or absence of a pale line passing through the marginal 

 border of forewings from costa to inner margin representing the 

 inner marginal edge of obsoletely-marked interneural spots (divisa) ; (3) 

 the absence or presence of the orange spots on forewings ; all the 

 specimens have orange lunules on the hindwings (tithonus), and almost 

 all on the four wings (a wrotithonus). The examples are Libelled" Central 

 France" (4), " France" (2), " Pyrenees" (6), so thatallare really French. 

 In some districts, and perhaps only in some seasons, the most extreme 

 forms apparently occur as " discontinuous variations," occurring 

 singly with large numbers of brown 2 s showing no trace of blue. This 

 seems to be the case at Fontainebleau, etc., but, in England, the extreme 

 specimens, still tithonus, but often less brilliantly and less thickly scaled 

 with blue, are distinct extremes of the series illustrated by subradiosa, 

 and semisyngrapha. This is the case at Dover, where in August. 1900, 

 Pickett took two examples in a locality that he works every season for 

 the less-marked " blue " aberrations, whilst Sladen notes (Proc. 8th. 

 Loud. Ent. Soc.j 1902, p. 114) that" in the place, near Devizes, where the 

 examples of tithonus (syngrapha) are taken, the ? s vary from the typical 

 form with a few dots or splashesof blue on the hindwings to full-blown 

 syngrapha" Sladen further notes (Ent., xxx., p. 81) that, near 

 Devizes, in August, 1896, he captured nine blue ? ah. syngrapha, and 

 saw as many worn ones, whilst, in 1901, he captured {10, and, in 1902, 

 12 (op. cit., xxxv., ]). 274). Trautmann records (Ent. Zeits. Ouben, 

 1908, p. 162) the capture, at Jena, of two light blue $? s which differed 

 very Little from typical J s. Dupont says (Bull. Soe. Amis .sc. 



